Page:The Source and Aim of Human Progress.djvu/48

44 greater than Man, and in Man there is nothing greater than Mind, or Reason. Societies whose object is the organization of a strong, centralized structure, the State, with its empire-building tendencies at the expense of life and liberty of the individual components may, from their nature, be characterized as organic, or structural.

In societies of the structural organic type centralization and organization with hypertrophy of structure are above rationalization and individualization with an ever greater tendency to cleavage of the conscious self from the subconscious self. Roughly classified, civilized, structural, organic societies may be theocratic, aristocratic, timocratic and democratic. In theocratic societies, the priests representing the conscious activity, usurp the government, such as in Egypt and India. In aristocratic societies the nobility of birth and wealth, representing the intelligence of the people, assume the rôle of social control, while the rest of the population are kept in bondage and ignorance. Such conditions are found in many Greek states, in the Roman state, and in the societies of the Middle Ages, as well as in the states of modern Europe before the revolutions, in England, Germany, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. In timocratic societies the rich, or propertied classes represent the conscious control, relegating the other classes to the regions of the passive subconscious. In democratic societies of modern times the power is in the hands of the people, really dominated by the middle classes, business men, professionals, labor aristocracy and their leaders who possess control of the masses which form the subconscious strata of social life activities. Thus throughout the forms and history of structural, organic societies there is present a cleavage of the conscious from the subconscious,—the conscious control of classes as against the subconscious activities of the masses.

Classes versus Masses may be characterized as the main cleavage of organic societies. That is why the whole history of humanity which, until our present times presents the evolution of societies, associations, and generally of social aggregates, based on structural organic lines, is full of conflicts of classes and masses. History is full of struggles of the powers of the conscious classes with the subconscious forces of the masses. This massive subconsciousness, predominating in the type of organic societies, gives to the society as a whole the psychological tone of the subconsciousness, the character of which is suggestibility, normal and abnormal, subject to the nature, conditions, and laws of subconscious trance states. In other